In the process of testing homes for various utilities and nonprofits I have experienced increased concern for combustion safety within the Energy Audit community. Some programs require combustion analysis for furnaces. BPI, RESNET, NYSERDA and many other rater establishments have exacting protocols for combustion safety including combustion gas analysis. I liken this to an annual physical that is a one day snapshot of your health. Who is to say that next week, next month, something won't fail? Home IAQ should be continuously analyzed to keep homeowners healthy and safe. Why can't the companies that profit from the sale of gas and oil take responsibility for combustion safety? Home owners are, for the most part, clueless about the risks and often disconnect or ignore CO monitoring systems because they are annoying or hard to service. I have found many with the batteries disconnected. Or just gone. Locally, LCUB is installing fiber optic and going into the cable media business. This becomes a two way portal into homes. Why not hook smart thermostats and IAQ equipment up and feed a central utility server that monitors air quality, CO, Gas, PM2.5 etc? Increasingly Alexa/Siri driven controls for home appliances are connected with thermostats and smartphones which in turn can be set up to track IAQ. Who better than the power companies that sell what is a potentially dangerous product to oversee the safety of their product? I am guessing, but I suggest that the residential insurance industry would like this idea.
Anyway, tighter homes will make Indoor Air Quality more relevant to home health and safety, maybe this should be a code issue for oil and gas fired equipment?
